known what it would do.'
'There's knowing and knowing,' observed Hieron quietly. 'Everyone who rides, for example, knows that it's dangerous to gallop downhill. But there are plenty of cavalrymen who do it all the time, because it looks bold and dashing. Once a fellow I knew killed a horse and broke his arm in three places doing it, and after that he understood that it was dangerous.'
'And never did it again?' asked the catapult assistant expectantly.
The king gave him a sharp look. 'He could never again bring himself to gallop at all. He had to resign from the cavalry. There's knowing and knowing.' His frown lifted as he looked at Good Health. 'I noticed that this machine worked every bit as well as its brother.'
The catapult captain gave a contented sigh and patted the new machine. 'Lord,' he said, 'it's the best I've ever handled. I don't know what you're paying the fellow for it, but you should double it. We fired five times before they were out of range, and it was as easy as killing blackbirds with a sling. Three direct hits, one partial, one miss. The range is about four hundred feet. I reckon this darling must have given permanent good health to thirty or forty of the enemy. Lord, a machine like this-'
'I know,' said Hieron. 'Well done! We've shown the enemy a thing or two about Syracuse, eh?'
When he had finished speaking to his men and given orders for the watch on the Romans and the treatment of the prisoners, Hieron went back to the gate tower from which he had observed the assault and climbed up it to the highest floor. A single scorpion crouched there alone, its operator already gone and the tension on its strings relaxed for the evening. The king glanced out the artillery port at the Romans- now firmly entrenched for the night- then turned to stare in the opposite direction, out at the city of Syracuse.
From this angle most of the city was hidden, masked by the plateau of Epipolae. But the Ortygia thrust out into a brilliantly blue sea, and to the south he could make out the sea gates and the naval docks. The temple of Athena shone red and white, and the mansions of Ortygia made a patch of green, with the fountain of Arethusa a deeper, more vivid green by the harborside. The air shimmered with the afternoon heat, making the city look as insubstantial, and as beautiful, as a dream city in a sunset cloud.
Hieron gave a long sigh, feeling a hot sick tension ebb away. He sat down in the doorway, resting his chin on his crossed hands. His lovely city, Syracuse. Safe- for the time being.
He hated killing. He had been horrified when he saw the two Roman maniples advancing on the city, because he had known at once what he was going to do to them. He thought now of the self-satisfied face of Appius Claudius, the Roman in command, and swallowed down a lump of raw hatred. It had been an act of crass stupidity to send out those four hundred men. Claudius should have sent a few scouts under cover of darkness- or a couple of thousand men in close formation, with siege machines. But Romans didn't understand mechanics, and, being Romans, were reluctant to admit it. Claudius would probably blame his assault's failure on the men who had died in it. Not brave enough, not resolute enough, not sensible enough! Throw the survivors out of the camp and give them rations of barley instead of wheat! The general erred and the men suffered: that was the Roman way.
Claudius had probably ordered the assault at once because he was in a hurry for a victory. He was a consul, elected by the Roman people to supreme power- but only for one year, and that year was already more than half over. Hieron suspected that the decision to attack Syracuse rather than a Carthaginian city had been taken because Claudius had thought it would be quicker to take one city than to defeat a great African empire, and he wanted to return home triumphant. Appius Claudius, conqueror of Syracuse! He would be credited with a glorious victory, and have a parade given in his honor. There was no doubt a place reserved in that parade for Hieron, too: walking behind the triumphal chariot in chains.
It had been Appius Claudius and the rest of the Claudian family who had started the war in Sicily in the first place. Hieron had always made a habit of collecting gossip from Italy, and he knew that the Roman Senate had in fact opposed the Sicilian expedition. Rome had had a treaty of peace with Carthage, and the senators strongly disapproved of the Mamertini: a Roman garrison which had committed similar atrocities in Rhegium had been beaten to death by its outraged fellow countrymen. But a faction headed by the Claudii had favored the expansion of Roman power to the south and had played on Roman distrust of Carthage to persuade an assembly of the Roman people to countenance this act of brazen aggression.
'Greedy, ignorant, vainglorious fool!' Hieron said out loud- then set his teeth. It was no good hating Appius Claudius. He might yet have to humble himself before the man. Claudius must have seen now that Syracuse was not a city that could be crushed as an aperitif, before the main war began. He might now offer reasonable peace terms so as not to go home empty-handed. Hieron had to be prepared to accept any realistic offer, even if it allowed Claudius to claim a victory and get his parade. He was bound by the absolute and unalterable facts that Syracuse alone could not contend with Rome, and that she could not trust Carthage: he had to accept terms. It was no use hating. Even the gods were slaves to necessity.
Perhaps the Roman people would now regret their decision to go to war. Syracuse had humbled them once at Messana, and now had humbled them again. Those men camped out there would not forget seeing their comrades butchered before their eyes. It was too much to hope for that they would give up and go home- Rome had never abandoned a war after declaring it- but the next Roman commander might well be more flexible, even if Claudius proved stubborn.
Hieron thought again of the Romans dying under the catapult fire; remembered the two-talent stone smashing its bloody way through the rank. That must have frightened them, surely? It had frightened Hieron, and he was on the right side of it! Perhaps when the three-talenter was working he could arrange for some Romans to see it.
If he got that three-talenter in good time. The engineer had gone home looking green. Hieron could understand how he felt; he'd felt that way himself after killing his first man. It had taken him months to get over it- as much as he ever had: he still woke up sometimes at night remembering that mercenary's face and feeling the hot stickiness of blood on his hands. Any man could lose his nerve. The cavalryman who'd galloped downhill had never recovered it. Should he go after Archimedes and try to talk him through the crisis? No. If the man were pressed to create more engines of death, the revulsion he must feel against those engines now would spill over onto the king as well. Better to leave him alone. Archimedes understood the importance of his work: his answer to the money had proved that. He would work himself around to the task if he could.
Hieron sighed. There were plenty of tasks awaiting him, too, down those stairs. But he sat for a while longer, alone at the top of the tower, looking out over his shining city.
10
Archimedes had walked most of the way back to the Achradina before he even noticed that he'd left the Hexapylon. Then he stopped in the middle of the dusty road and looked up at the sky. Light. Because of what he had made, thirty or forty men who had seen the light that morning would never see it again. No- more than that. Thirty or forty were only what Good Health had killed; the Welcomer had accounted for some too. To say that they had been foreigners bent on conquest was surprisingly little comfort. They were dead, and he had shaped their death for them, devising it with great cunning from wood, stone, and the hair of women.
He had never believed that a man's head could be knocked off like that, and now something inside him had revolted. If he put the hand of his mind to catapults, it went numb and dead. Some part of him wanted nothing more to do with such things. Trying to force it there by loyalty and will was like trying to wrestle a donkey through a door. And yet the city still needed every defense he could contrive for her. Her enemies were camped before her gates, and if they got in everyone within her would suffer. What had happened that day would only make the rest of the Roman army angry.
He sat down in the dust of the roadside and covered his face. He thought of Apollo, who had 'come like night' upon the Greeks at Troy, and caused the funeral pyres to burn night and day. There was nothing to be gained by praying to such a god, so he did not pray. He thought instead of cylinders. They began as cylinders of catapult strings, but altered suddenly into abstract cylinders, ideal in form. A section cut through a cylinder at a right angle to its axis was a circle. He imagined that circle, then rotated it to form a sphere which his imaginary cylinder precisely enclosed. Diameters, centers, and axes whirled through his mind, forming a pattern that was fascinating, complex, bewitchingly beautiful.
